And in February, the country’s Interior Ministry announced the arrests of about 100 alleged extremists, and published a video allegedly showing the group possessed a formula for making explosives and a photograph of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

Museum: ‘A jewel of Tunisian heritage’

The museum is housed in a 19th century palace and describes itself as “a jewel of Tunisian heritage.” Its exhibits showcase Tunisian art, culture and history, and boasts a collection of mosaics, including one of the poet Virgil, as well as marble sculptures, furniture, jewels and other items.

As much as its place in Tunisian culture, the museum is significant for its location — right next to the building that houses the North African nation’s parliament.

That government building was evacuated shortly after noon Wednesday, Tunisian lawmaker Sayida Ounissi said on Twitter.

Sabrine Ghoubatini, a Tunisian lawmaker, said that an administrator interrupted a committee meeting to tell everyone “to lay down on the ground because there was an exchange of fire between terrorists and police. So we laid down on the ground, and they began to evacuate us.”

Political turnover in Tunisia

While it’s been more peaceful than other countries, Tunisia has seen its share of violence and political turmoil.

There was cautious optimism after October 2011 elections — the country’s first since its independence in 1956 — that involved 60 political parties and thousands of independent candidates vying for seats in the country’s new Constitutional Assembly.

The moderate Islamist Ennahda party won a majority of seats in that vote, and Marzouki became President.

The next two years saw some crackdowns on media freedom, with the ruling party publicly shaming and threatening journalists who opposed moves to make every media outlet state-run,wrote Alaya Allani, a history professor at Tunisia’s Manouba University, in September 2013.

And, he wrote, the Ennahda party had tried to insert the concept of criminalizing blasphemy into the nation’s constitution and to force a certain kind of strict religious discourse in mosques.

The 2013 assassinations of two opposition leaders outside their homes ultimately expedited the Ennahda party’s fall.